Usually Amazon has a free app of the day to entice customers to utilize their Appstore. But today, the company is offering an additional eight applications to be picked up for absolutely nothing. And the apps available are quite impressive — Wheel of Fortune, Sonic Jump, and Wreck-It Ralph among others. Excluding the usual free app of the day, Amazon’s set of free apps total about $17.

Well folks, it’s been roughly a year since Amazonlaunched their Appstore for Android as they looked to change the market game forever with their free app of the day. While at first they offered some great apps like Swiftkey or Plants vs. Zombies there have been complaints that there have been a slew of lackluster offerings for the free app but I digress. In celebration of their one year landmark Amazon has decided to celebrate by offering up their Premium (paid) apps for 50% or more off. For instance, today you can get Plants Vs. Zombies for 67% off ($0.99). Tomorrow they will have two apps discounted then three the next day and so on.

Besides discounted apps, Amazon is also throwing in a chance to win a Kindle Fire to 8 lucky contestants who enter their contest between now and March 31st. Discounted apps and free Kindle Fires aside, Amazon also took some time out of their day to hit us with some number data regarding their Appstore. One of the highlights from that information is the fact that they jumped from offering 4,000 apps to over 31,000. It may not be as many as the Google Play Store but that’s still a decent number of apps.

Hit the break below to find a link to the contest as well as see the top downloaded paid and free apps over the past year. There’s also a break down of highlights and tidbits for you to check out too. Hit the Appstore Birthday Page daily to see what apps are going to be discounted. While most of these apps were free via the Free App of the Day at some point, if you missed them, then here is your chance to get them at a discounted price. Enjoy! Read more

While I don’t use remote desktop apps all too often, as I am near my computer usually anyway, in the times I have Splashtop Remote Desktop has been my app of choice. Connections are stable and I have found little lag in use. I have yet to drop a connection through the app itself, and when I have it was something to do with my router. Well today is a good day for those that need a remote desktop app as Amazon is offering it as its free App of the Day. Given that it is normally $4.99 any other day, this is one heck of a deal. Version 1.6.5.6 offers the following features: Read more

3D graphics, fast-paced gaming and intuitive controls? Those are the traits of today’s free Amazon app: Cross Court Tennis. It’s a tennis game that allows players to work their way up from being a scrub to eventually the world’s best. Cross Court Tennis features an Instant Play mode for immediate gaming and of course a Career mode which allows you to play various tournaments with the goal of winning a Grand Slam in the end.

What stands out on this game are the controls– you swipe in order to perform a basic function such as directing your player or performing a specific attack. There’s an Auto-Run mode in the game that allows beginners to just have control of their shots– but the game will automatically control your footwork. Once ready, you can then move to the Free-Run mode and you will then have total control of the direction of your player in addition to your shots. It’s challenging at first, but definitely intuitive in the end. Establishing your drop shots, slice shots and topspin takes some getting used to, but once you practice and get the hang of it, you’ll be owning opponents in no time. If you play in the Career mode, there’s something you should note. While you can save your game’s progress, you can’t save your progress onto your device’s SD card. Just something I thought you all should be aware of in case this might be a potential deal-breaker.

The game normally costs $1.99, but is available for free in the Amazon App Store today. Keep in mind it’s a hefty 21MB in girth and requires a Wi-Fi connection to download, but it does run on any Android 2.1 and above device. If you don’t have the Amazon App Store yet, be sure to check out our handy guide on how to install it onto your device. Hit the break for the App Store link and some screenshots for your viewing. Read more

Today, Amazon’s free app of the day is, Lets Bowl, a decent game with great graphics and easy gameplay. I am not going to spend much time going over it as this is one of the bowling games that we have reviewed in the past. To get a comparison against other similar games, check out our other bowling game reviews for PBA Bowling 2 and 3D Bowling.

When playing the game I notice that there isn’t much control over placing spin on the ball and sometimes ball travel seems very unrealistic. I don’t think that this is one of those in depth physics based games but rather something you can play to kill a few minutes of spare time. Hit the source link below to get the free download but be sure that you already have the Amazon Appstore installed on your device, if not, read up on our quick tips page to learn how.

Today’s free Amazon app, Hungry MonstR, is another one of those time-killer games. Usually $1.99, this may not be that killer game you have been looking for and ends up being one of those you load only to hand off to your kids while driving.

The game-play is easy, you have to protect your ice cream cart from hungry monsters who’s only desire is to make off with your goods without the intention of paying. Each monster has a different color, one of four colors that correlates with these suction tube thingys in each corner of your screen. As the game begins, the monsters walk toward your cart at a leisurely pace in random order from all sides of the screen. Your goal is to flick them into one of the corner tubes based on what color the monster is, blue monster – flick em’ to the blue tube, pink monster – pink tube. You get the idea, just don’t flick the monster into the wrong color tube because that will plug it up for a few seconds rendering it unusable. As you progress the monsters pick up the pace, all the while bringing even more monster friends to the ice cream heist. Read more

Since Amazon opened their app store, they have offered a free app of the day each and every day. The deal has always been if an app is featured for free, the developer would get at least 20% of the list price. It does not appear that Amazon has changed this policy, but they are making offers to certain developers to feature their app for free with nothing in return.

Developer Shifty Jelly recently received the following from Amazon:

“As you may already know, the Free App of the Day offer placement is one of the most visible and valuable spaces on the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your app “[name removed]” in our Free App of the Day calendar. We have seen tremendous results from this promotion spot and believe it will bring you a great deal of positive reviews and traffic. It is an opportunity to build your brand especially in association with a brand like Amazon’s. The current price of this placement is at 0% rev share for that one day you are placed.”

The question is why is Amazon doing this? We will get into that in a second, but lets first analyze what happened in this real life example.